"Welcome back," said Miss Lou kindly, when in speaking distance.
"There, don't go on so. Sit down and I'll sit down with you." She sank at the foot of the tree and leaned against it, panting.
"I des feels ez ef de yeth ud op'n en swaller me," began the poor renegade, quivering with emotion.
"Don't talk so, Aun' Suke. I'm not strong enough to stand foolishness.
You will go back with me and stay with Uncle Lusthah and Aun' Jinkey and Zany. You will cook for us all just the same and by and by you will be as free as I am."
"Well, Miss Lou, I comin' back lak de perdigous son, but ole miss ain'
got no fatted calf fer me, ner you neider, I reckon. I des feered on w'at ole miss say en do."
"Aun' Suke," said the girl, taking the woman's great black hand, "you stand by me and I'll stand by you. When I get stronger we'll see what's best to be done. Now I can't think, I don't know. I only feel that we must help one another till all is clearer."
Mrs. Baron accepted Aun' Suke's presence in the kitchen again in grim silence. She believed it the earnest of the speedy return of all the others, and resolved to bide her time when the Southern armies restored completely the old order of things.
Mrs. Whately drove over during the day and was aghast at what had occurred.
"I have kept the great majority of my hands by conciliation and promising them a share in the crops. Indeed, I had virtually to treat them as if free. It was either that or ruin."
"Well," growled her brother, "you can't keep that pace and I wouldn't begin it."
"I can only do the best I can, from day to day," sighed the lady, "and I've been almost distracted."
After showing her affectionate solicitude for Miss Lou she returned, feeling that her presence at home was now hourly needed.
Gradually the little household began to adjust itself to the new order of things, and day by day Mr. and Mrs. Baron were compelled to see that the few servants who ministered to them were kept at their tasks by an influence in which they had no part. Almost imperceptibly, Miss Lou regained her strength, yet was but the shadow of her former self. Uncle Lusthah gave his attention to the garden, already getting weed-choked.
The best he could hope to do was to keep up a meagre supply of vegetables, and Zany in the cool of the day often gave him a helping hand.
Late one afternoon Miss Lou, feeling a little stronger, went to Aun'
Jinkey's cabin and sat down on the doorstep.
"Oh, mammy," she sighed, "I'm so tired, I'm so tired; yet I can do nothing at all."
"You po' lil chile," groaned Aun' Jinkey, "how dif'ernt you looks ner w'en you fus sot dar en wish sump'n happen."
"Oh," cried the girl almost despairingly, "too much has happened! too much has happened! How can God let such troubles come upon us?"
"Eben Uncle Lusthah hab ter say he dunno. He say he des gwine ter hole on twel de eend, en dat all he kin do."
"Oh, mammy, I'm all at sea. I haven't any strength to hold on and there doesn't seem anything to hold on to. Oh, mammy, mammy, do you think he's surely dead?"
"I feared he is," groaned Aun' Jinkey. "Dey say he spook come arter Perkins en dat w'y de oberseer clared out."
"Oh, horrible!" cried the girl. "If his spirit could come here at all would it not come to me instead of to that brutal wretch? Oh, mammy, I don't know which is worse, your religion or your superstition. You believe in a God who lets such things happen and you can think my noble friend would come back here only to scare a man like Perkins. It's all just horrible. Oh, Allan, Allan, are you so lost to me that you can never look goodwill into my eyes again?"
Tears rushed to her eyes for the first time since she heard the dreadful tidings, and she sobbed in her mammy's arms till exhausted.
That outburst of grief and the relief of tears given by kindly nature was the decisive point in Miss Lou's convalescence. She was almost carried back to her room and slept till late the following day. When she awoke she felt that her strength was returning, and with it came the courage to take up the burdens of life. For weeks it was little more than the courage of a naturally brave, conscientious nature which will not yield to the cowardice and weakness of inaction. The value of work, of constant occupation, to sustain and divert the mind, was speedily learned. Gradually she took the helm of outdoor matters from her uncle's nerveless hands. She had a good deal of a battle in respect to Chunk. It was a sham one on the part of Zany, as the girl well knew, for Chunk's "tootin'" was missed terribly. Mr. and Mrs. Baron at first refused point-blank to hear of his returning.
"Uncle," said his ward gravely, "is only your property at stake? I can manage Chunk, and through him perhaps get others. I am not responsible for changes which I can't help; I am to blame if I sit down idly and helplessly and do nothing better than fret or sulk. Your bitter words of protest are not bread and bring no money. For your sakes as well as my own you must either act or let me act."
The honorable old planter was touched at his most sensitive point, and reluctantly conceded, saying, "Oh, well, if you think you can save any of your property out of the wreck, employ Chunk on your own responsibility."
So Chunk was reinstated in his granny's cabin and given a share in all he could raise and secure of the crops. The negro was as shrewd as Jacob of old, but like the Hebrew patriarch could do much under the inspiration of his twofold affection for Zany and his young mistress.
And so the summer and early fall wore away. The railroad line of communication was maintained, and upon it drifted away Mr. Baron's former slaves and the great majority of the others in the neighborhood.
The region in which the plantation was situated was so remote and sparsely settled that it was a sort of border land, unclaimed and unvisited by any considerable bodies from either party. Rev. Dr.
Williams' congregation had shrunken to a handful. He officiated at one end of the church, and his plump, black-eyed daughter led the singing at the other, but it was observed that she looked discontented rather than devotional. She was keenly alive to the fact that there was not an eligible man left in the parish. Uncle Lusthah patiently drove the mules every clear Sunday morning and Mr. and Mrs. Baron sat in the carriage whose springs Aun' Suke had sorely tried; but Miss Lou would not go with them. After his readiness to marry her to her cousin she felt it would be worse than mockery to listen to Dr. Williams again.
But a deep, yet morbid spiritual change was taking place in the girl.
As of old, she thought and brooded when her hands were busy, and during her long, solitary evenings on the piazza. Strange to say, she was drawing much of her inspiration from a grave--the grave of a rough, profane soldier whom she knew only as "Yarry." There was something in his self-forgetful effort in her behalf, even when in the mortal anguish of death, which appealed to her most powerfully. His heroism, expecting, hoping for no reward, became the finest thing in her estimation she had ever witnessed. Her own love taught her why Scoville was attracted by her and became ready to do anything for her. "That's the old, old story," she mused, "ever sweet and new, yet old as the world. Poor Yarry was actuated by a purely unselfish, noble impulse.
Only such an impulse can sustain and carry me through my life. No, no, Mrs. Waldo, I can never become happy in making others happy. I can never be happy again. The bullet which killed Allan Scoville pierced my heart also and it is dead, but that poor soldier taught me how one can still live and suffer nobly, and such a life must be pleasing to the only God I can worship." All wondered at the change gradually taking place in the girl. It was too resolute, too much the offspring of her will rather than her heart to have in it much gentleness, but it was observed that she was becoming gravely and patiently considerate of others, even of their faults and follies. As far as possible, her uncle and aunt were allowed their own way without protest, the girl sacrificing her own feelings and wishes when it was possible. They at last began to admit that their niece was manifesting a becoming spirit of submission and deference, when in fact her management of their affairs was saving them from an impoverishment scarcely to be endured.
For Mrs. Whately the girl now had a genuine and strong affection, chilled only by her belief that the plan in regard to the son was ever in the mother's mind. So indeed it was. The sagacious woman watched Miss Lou closely and with feelings of growing hope as well as of tenderness. The girl was showing a patience, a strength of mind, and, above all, a spirit of self-sacrifice which satisfied Mrs. Whately that she was the one of all the world for her son.
"I do believe," she thought, "that if I can only make Louise think it will be best for us all as well as Madison, she will yield. The spirit of self-sacrifice seems her supreme impulse. Her sadness will pass away in time, and she would soon learn to love the father of her children.
What's more, there is something about her now which would hold any man's love. See how her lightest wish controls those who work for her, even that harum-scarum Zany."
In the late autumn a long-delayed letter threw Mrs. Whately into a panic of fear and anxiety. A surgeon wrote that her son had been severely wounded and had lost his left arm, but that he was doing well.
Here the author laid down his pen. In Mr. Roe's journal, under date of July 11, is an entry alluding to a conversation with a friend. That conversation concerned the conclusion of this book, and was, in effect, substantially the same as the outline given by him in a letter, part of which is quoted as follows:
"It is not my purpose to dwell further on incidents connected with the close of the war, as the book may be considered too long already. It only remains for me now to get all my people happy as soon as possible.
Zany and Chunk 'make up,' and a good deal of their characteristic love-making will be worked in to relieve the rather sombre state of things at this stage. Whately returns with his empty sleeve, more of a hero than ever in his own eyes and his mother's. Miss Lou thinks him strangely thoughtful and considerate in keeping away, as he does, after a few short visits at The Oaks. The truth is, he is wofully disappointed at the change in his cousin's looks. This pale, listless, hollow-eyed girl is not the one who set him to reading 'Taming of the Shrew.' That her beauty of color and of outline could ever return, he does not consider; and in swift revulsion of feeling secretly pays court elsewhere.
"Mrs. Whately, however, makes up for her son's deficiencies. Utterly ignorant how affairs are shaping, she works by her representations upon Miss Lou's sympathies until the weary consent is wrung from the poor girl--'Nothing matters to me any more! If it makes you all happy--why--then--But I must wait a year.' She feels that her love for Allan Scoville will never be less, and that this period of time is little enough to devote to him in silent memory.
"The delighted aunt hastens to report to her son, who stares rather blankly, for a lover, as he hears of this concession on his cousin's part, and without answer, he orders his horse and rides furiously away.
The ride is one that has been very frequently taken since the young man's return, and pretty soon he is in earnest conversation with the rosy-cheeked, black-eyed daughter of Dr. Williams. There seems to be very good understanding between the two, and later, just at the final scene, it will come out as effectively as can be portrayed the startling news of their secret marriage.
"The days go on. One afternoon in the late autumn, Aun' Jinkey, smoking and 'projeckin'' as usual in her cabin, has a vision which fairly sends her heart, as she will express it, 'right troo de mouf.' Was it a 'spook,' or had the dead really come back to life? And I hear her exclaim, throwing up her hands, 'Bress de Lawd, Marse Scoville, dat you? Whar you drap fum dis yere time? I doan almos' know you widout de un'fo'm!'
"But the 'vision' will not stop to narrate to the old aunty of his capture, imprisonment and illness, his release and hurried journey North. He catches sight of the slight figure of Miss Lou in the distance near the run, and in a moment is beside her. 'Only death could keep me from seeking you and living for you always, did I not tell you, my darling, my darling?'
"And here I will leave them. The reader's imagination will picture more if more is wished. It is better so."
THE END